Blaming the Strawless Brickmaker
Constraint Neglect in Judging Decision Quality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6433935 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Xilin Li (0000-0003-1343-5962, Marketing Department China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) Shanghai China, corresponding author), Christopher K Hsee (0000-0002-8391-7847, Marketing Department Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business Beijing China) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Behavioral Decision Making (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0894-3257 • E-ISSN: 1099-0771 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1002/bdm.70006 |
| OpenAlex | W4406135278 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 42 |
People often judge the quality of selection decisions made by others: The CEO of a firm may judge the quality of hiring decisions made by the firm's HR personnel; the readers of a journal may judge the quality of manuscript‐acceptance decisions by the journal's editor. To accurately judge others' selection decision quality, evaluators should consider not only the outcome of the selection decisions but also the constraints of the decision‐maker. For example, to judge the quality of the hiring decisions made by the HR personnel, the CEO should consider not only how many high‐quality (vs. low‐quality) candidates the HR personnel hired, but also how many high‐quality (vs. low‐quality) candidates applied, and how many candidates the HR personnel needed to hire. We theorize that evaluators tend to overlook these constraints, and, consequently, judge decision‐makers who faced greater constraints as having made worse decisions than decisions‐makers who faced lesser constraints, even if the former's decisions were actually as good as or better than the latter's. We refer to this phenomenon as Blaming the Strawless Brickmaker (from the saying “making bricks without straw”). Eight studies, employing mixed methods, demonstrate the Blaming‐the‐Strawless‐Brickmaker effect, examine its underlying mechanism, and suggest ways to improve the quality of judged selection decision quality
Cognitive psychology · Constraint (computer-aided design · Epistemology · Neglect · Quality (philosophy · Computer Science · Decision-Making and Behavioral Economics · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Law, Economics, and Judicial Systems · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology
Music, Pandas, and Muggers
General Evaluability Theory
The Anchoring-and-Adjustment Heuristic
Emotion and Decision Making
The Evaluability Hypothesis
Choice Bracketing
The base-rate fallacy in probability judgments
On the psychology of prediction.
The Theory and Classification of Criterion Bias
The Intuitive Psychologist And His Shortcomings
The consequences of perceived discrimination for psychological well-being
The correspondence bias
Outcome bias in decision evaluation
Duration neglect in retrospective evaluations of affective episodes
Why benefiting from discrimination is less recognized as discrimination
Costs and benefits of judgment errors
The actor-observer asymmetry in attribution
The Psychology of Marginal Utility
Opportunity Cost Neglect
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |